Chapter 150: Chapter 146

The first major defeat of 1st Company was a sharp reminder to the Nexus about the dangers of the wasteland. While the battle was not lost, seeing combat footage of Sev single-handedly putting down the threat further cemented just how much the Nexus’ existence hinged on its not-divine ruler. The media outlets freely aired, dissected and discussed the authorized clips of the Philadelphia incident, and by the end of the week the images of Sev’s vaunted soldiers being dragged away in various excruciating states of agony stoked the embers of fear and anxiety of the hidden dangers of the lands beyond the Nexus.

 

Madison shook her head as she recalled the whole thing. Like many others, she hadn’t expected Sev’s little bunch of fanatics to actually fail. The protections and blessings Sev granted them was actually not enough for once. But that no one actually died yet was still a solid testament to just how protected they were.

 

The head of the Nexus’ Occult Department should know, she was prioritized to study the eldritch properties of the contraptions that spawned the living lightning. It was horrifically amazing to learn that the tangled rules of the metanatural could be compiled and digitized into a computer, and with just a flick of a button, binary electrical signals could transmit the same metanatural emissions as potent as the most well-prepared ritual circle. 

 

And to top it all off, after quadruple checking on the results, Madison was quite convinced that the whole matrix of fusion was a result of accidental math. Eva and Cabal confirmed the calculations, there was a single error, a multiplication instead of a squaring. It was bad maths, and the freak coincidence that the elaborate tesla coil that casted the lightning bolt was shaped just within parameters to funnel the right amount of ambient eldritch energies.

 

She read the notes in the purified terminal, of the project’s chief scientist worrying about how the energy caster was badly dinged up during transit, and was sure that the first run would be a complete failure. Little did he know that the right indentations could optimize the harmonics of the higher dimensional energies around the room. The whole array didn’t imbue a stealth field on its object, but the freak result of fusion was deemed by the higher ups as a worthwhile tangent to explore. 

 

Then the bombs fell, and according to the final, cut-off audio log, the shockwave was strong enough that the weldings of the FEV vats ruptured (really, just how bad was the workmanship in the old world?), and in the ensuing chaos of screaming scientists, someone went past the fusion array’s motion sensor and then…

 

The audio log ended there, and Madison had to guess that FEV and eldritch energies didn’t go too well. And somehow someone’s soul got absorbed into the array’s server. The whole array was left running for at least a couple of years, judging from fiddling with the terminal’s settings. And throughout its activation, the array flayed off a part of the soul to create the living ball of lightning, instead of the straight-to-the-point zap that the audio logs describe.

 

Nasty business. The first thing Madison did as a result of her research on the fusion array was to make the whole Philadelphia Experiment as an example for why you needed someone else to double-check your maths, and just how bad a ‘simple mistake’ could become when it came to the metanatural. After that, with Sev’s assistance, the team tried to transfer the soul possessing the terminal out into a spare body.

 

Madison didn’t ask, but Sev had assured her that the body’s former owner was getting off lightly for just a simple existential obliteration.

 

The rite of exorcism-cum-repossession was technically a success, but the soul from the server had been flayed so badly that it only had enough mental capacity to blink, breathe and occasionally shudder in its new body. After thorough testing to be sure, the centuries-old mind in a decades-old body was mercifully euthanized. Another delayed casualty from the Old War.

 

The warped research project was rightfully classified as forbidden tech, and transferred over to Tleilax’s darker pits. As per Nexus protocols, just a minimum of information was allowed to be kept in public archives, particularly the details on how to effectively identify and counter this metanatural manifestation. Madison for one was glad to get flesh fusion out of her hands, looking too much into the eldritch theoreticals of it, along with just thinking about the possible scenarios needed for testing, made her skin crawl.

 

As usual with new eldritch discoveries, an ethics meeting with Nora followed, but thankfully it was a short meeting as the whole line of research was classified under forbidden rituals. No debating over the pros and cons, no watching the woman struggle to not tear her hair out as Sev casually made his case.

 

*****

 

“So is everyone ready?” Evon Trevor, recently promoted occultist of NOD checked with her two o’clock meeting. The gathered troopers from 1st Company nodded with varying eagerness, seated within the ritual circle around her in the lotus position.

 

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The recent disastrous combat had struck the poor kids hard, but they were already picking themselves up and returning themselves to fighting condition. Evon had seen the footage and like practically everyone else in the Nexus, the former Enclave lieutenant didn’t scorn or mock the Nexus’ elite soldiers. She was sure that any conventional force couldn’t have done any better, and maybe only the Brotherhood of Steel and the more elite Enclave elements could have reached similar results. 

 

If anything, Evan was more impressed that most of the young soldiers were free of any mental trauma. Their backgrounds as liberated slaves must have played a big role in that, she thought.

 

As for those that weren’t unaffected, well, that’s why they were here today.

 

Evon put on her visor and began a slow chant, reading off the words that were projected onto her eyepiece’s embedded HUD. She reached for the bowl of powdered Valerian roots conveniently balanced on a platter of a hovering drone-bot with other ingredients, and flung its contents in a circle around her. An emphasis on a metanaturally charged word caused the candles around each trooper to burst to life, their flames quickly turning from warm orange to a cold, foreboding purple-blue.

 

Expertly keeping the chant’s tempo going with well-timed breaths, Evon reached for other ingredients, throwing some in the air and sprinkling others on the ground before her. By the time the chant came to an end, through the projected words in her visor she could see the troopers’ eyes closed, their poses drooping to a relaxed slump as they were dragged to eldritch sleep.

 

Then came the most important part. Evon took the bowl of eyes, naturally pure from deceased donors. “Thank you, Avery Kell, thank you Jenny Flakes, thank you Corbin Stone,” she intoned with somber appreciation. Their names were already added to the archive of the generous dead, but it never hurt to be reminded of the selfless contribution of the Nexus’ citizens.

 

Evon emptied the three pairs of neatly harvested eyeballs onto one cupped hand, then after tossing the bowl aside, used both hands to cradle them reverently. New words streamed through her visor, and she began the actual procedure. The unnatural noises were hard to pronounce at first, but once she got going, the metanatural weight of the rite pushed along her vocal chords and the chant flowed freely out of her. 

 

The candles flickered and swayed, the smoke snaking from them swirling around the troopers they surrounded. Evon fought to keep still as the energies swirled around her, whipping her hair and labcoat about. Her arms trembled as the power was channeled through her tingling hands and into the eyes, and eventually the tendrils of candle smoke around the troopers were dragged into her localized whirlwind, and were drawn into the six eyeballs. 

 

The ritual reached its peak seventy-three seconds later, as the candles burnt themselves to an unnaturally quick end, and the last of the smoke was sucked into the now jet black eyeballs. Evon gasped out the last eldritch word and the eyes in her aching hands burst into bright blue flame. She gave herself a few seconds to suck in precious, smoke-tinged air before snapping out the spell-breaking word to snap everyone awake.

 

“How do you all feel?” she asked unnecessarily, the troopers sharing looks as they slowly got up. Distracted nods and words of thanks were given, and Evon smiled proudly despite the unfocused attention. The disorientation of having a cleared mind was typical, even if burdened for only a short time. 

 

Not that she knew how it felt herself, but the results from the ritual to drain out the mental traumas and haunting nightmares was supposedly so stark that it was akin to experiencing the world with new, sharper senses. Colors were said to be more vibrant, sounds no longer muted, and even sleep was easier to slip into.

 

These kids deserved it, at the very least. After all the fighting they’ve willingly gone through, acting as a metanatural line of defense. Evon lingered in the ritual room to watch Sev’s elite guard murmur and smile and giggle with each other. She watched them filed out and then cleaned up the ritual room before going for her break. 

 

Evon had to remember to fully enjoy that respite, her four o’clock was another cleansing session, but this time for liberated sex slaves. She’d also have to put in a request for a restock after the day is done with.

 

It felt good, fulfilling even, to help dispense the marvels and miracles Sev had generously given to uplift her oppressed fellow humans in a way the Enclave and all its militant discipline and bureaucracy could never achieve. Evon truly enjoyed doing her part to help the Nexus bring, as the devoted 1st Company liked to say, peace through power.

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